Marking a landmark for shipping electrification, the all electric passenger vessel ‘Future of The Fjords’, owned by Norwegian company The Fjords, has won the Ship of the Year 2018 award at SMM, the maritime trade fair currently underway in Hamburg.
Being the world’s first all-electric carbon fibre vessel, the award-winning ‘Future of The Fjords’ was competing with ‘Antarctic Endurance’, a krill harvesting ship owned by Aker Biomarine, and the expedition cruise ship ‘Le Lapérouse’, owned by PONANT.
This was the second ship award for the company, which has won the same prize in SMM 2016 for the sister vessel ‘Vision of The Fjords’. Both vessels were built at Brødrene Aa shipyard.
Launched in May, Future of the Fjords will make around 700 yearly round trips along the UNESCO World Heritage listed fjord route between Flåm and Gudvangen and will be the first vessel of its kind to offer completely emission free transport through the Western Norwegian landscape.
In addition, Brødrene Aa along with The Fjords, developed a charging solution called the PowerDock. This floating glass fibre dock will sit in the water at Gudvangen, including a 2.4 MWh battery pack.
This charges throughout the day via connection to the local grid network, which does not have the capacity to charge the Future of The Fjords directly. This solution allows the vessel to efficiently ‘refill’ in just 20 minutes.
Moreover, the dock stores consumables, fuel for sister vessels, and allows black water to be offloaded for treatment on land. This, Future of The Fjords does not to discharge sewage directly into the fjords.
Explaining the ships’ technology, The Fjords CEO, Rolf A. Sandvik, said:
Due to the limited local grid capability in our port of Gudvangen we could only access a charging capacity of 1.2MWh, just half of what the vessel requires. So we, together with Brødrene Aa, in collaboration with our project partners, had to think a little differently to achieve our aims. Together we came up with the idea of a floating 2.4MWh battery bank contained in a 40m long glass fibre composite body. This could simply and slowly top up capacity from the grid through the day without the need for disruptive and expensive power surges. We ended up fitting the dock with a 40 m3 diesel tank for Vision, alongside storage room for on-board consumables, allowing the vessels to maximise passenger capacity. It’s a one of a kind piece of floating infrastructure, with potential far beyond this project.
Shipping electrification is considered a significant means for a shift towards decarbonization, especially in the inland sector, as electric and hybrid vessels with energy storage in batteries and optimized power control can provide significant reductions in fuel consumption, maintenance and emissions.